


An Archer and a Lil Asskicker

by DarylDixonGrimes



Category: The Walking Dead (TV)
Genre: Domestic Rickyl, F/M, Father/Daughter Relationships, M/M, Modified Canon Universe, basically a bunch of cute stories with daddy daryl, husbands rickyl
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-03-29
Updated: 2017-03-28
Packaged: 2018-10-12 09:57:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,100
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10488174
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DarylDixonGrimes/pseuds/DarylDixonGrimes
Summary: A series of loosely connected one shots focusing on Daryl's relationship to Judith as one of her fathers. Some occasional domestic Rickyl thrown in. The setting is somewhere between canon and AU. Will not be in order timeline wise (aka Judith's age will vary).





	

**Author's Note:**

> This will be an ongoing thing that I'll update whenever I feel like it.

Judith’s first nightmare turned Daryl into a 10-year-old boy again, hollering and shaking in his bed while his dad yelled at his mother to shut him up before he went in his bedroom and did it himself. For a split second, with the covers wrapped tight around him and the sound of screams filling the house, he was transported back to a different time, when the dead stayed dead and his only real family were his brother and a beloved uncle he saw once a year if he was lucky.

And then he heard Rick scrambling beside him in a panic to get out of the bed. The deadly slide of the Colt being ripped off the nightstand reached Daryl’s ears, and he was back in the present, scrambling to get up himself, his knife gripped tightly in his hand as he rushed down the hallway at Rick’s heels.

Carl was already there, an uzi hanging loosely at his side. The fear in Daryl’s chest subsided a bit at seeing the boy acting so casual. But he still had to see her for himself.

“What happened?” Rick asked, already sliding around Carl into the little girl’s bedroom. Daryl stepped in right behind him, relieved to see Judith sitting in her bed with her Grembly squeezed tight to her chest. The sight of her like that filled him with instant understanding, his heart breaking.

“Papa! Daddy!” Judith’s voice broke as soon as she screamed the words, and she started sobbing, huge tears rolling down her pudgy cheeks. She held her arms up, and Rick fell to his knees and into her embrace, fingers stroking her golden hair.

“I’m going back to bed,” Carl mumbled from somewhere out in the hallway, shuffling off into the darkness of the house. Daryl shuffled too, closer to the little girl who owned every piece of his heart not already occupied by Rick Grimes. He set his knife softly on the dresser and knelt down beside his partner. As soon as he hit the carpet, Judith pulled one tiny arm off the leader and wrapped it around his neck, not satisfied until she was secure in the arms of both men.

“You have a bad dream, lil asskicker?” Daryl asked softly.

“Walkies,” she said quietly. “They eated Grembly and were gonna eated Aunt Ta-Ta.” She buried her face in the space between her two fathers’ shoulders, and Daryl felt warm tears soak through his tee shirt. He hated it. The day she was born, he’d vowed that nothing would ever hurt her if he could help it, and there he was, unable to do a damn thing about the horrors already imprinted on her tiny mind.

“We would never let that happen,” Rick said quietly.

“Walkies wouldn’t want Grembly anyway,” Daryl said, trying his best to soothe the small child. “Stinks too much like Uncle Eugene.”

Judith sniffled, leaning back up to look at both of them with glistening blue eyes turned violet by her pink night light. Daryl and Rick both reached up at the same time, glancing at each other before they thumbed away tears on either side of her face.

“And Aunt Ta-Ta?” she asked, her face wrinkling with another sniffle. Daryl wished he had his bandanna with him to wipe her tiny nose.

“She lives with Aunt Chonnie and Aunt Carol,” Rick said. “Walkies wouldn’t stand a chance.”

“He’s right,” Daryl said. “Sides, your Aunt Ta-Ta is pretty handy with a gun herself.”

“Grembly needs somethin,” Judith said. “To be safe.”

“Okay, sweetheart,” Rick said, no doubt already trying to think of something they could do to make his daughter feel secure. Truth be told, they hadn’t lost anyone in a long time, and telling the little girl Tara would definitely be okay didn’t even feel like the partial lie it might have once. The walkers were fewer and fewer as the years ticked by, and they had fortified the wall and added a second one, using the space in between for gardens and small farm animals.

It would take a literal army to penetrate Alexandria. Even herds could be picked off from the guard towers before they broke through. Cleanup was still a bitch though.

“I’ll take care of it,” Daryl said. Even without any looming threats, Rick had enough on his plate between organizing their growing population, maintaining order, and keeping the trade routes between them and surrounding communities safe. “I used to have nightmares too when I was little,” the hunter added.

“Really?”

“Mhm,” Daryl said, sitting back on his knees a bit to look at his adopted daughter. “We didn’t have walkies then, just Willies, but they were scary too.”

“Did you have a Grembly too, Daddy? For when you woked up?”

“I had a monkey.” Daryl reached out to smooth Judith’s inexplicably light hair, remembering the homemade sock monkey he used to curl up with before his father shredded it to pieces right in front of him. He was infinitely glad she would never know anything but love from the people she called family. Even if the fact that he couldn’t take away her nightmares was still weighing heavily on his heart.

“How’d you get the Willies to go way?” she asked. And Daryl chewed it over. The truth wouldn’t work, that the nightmares had continued long into his teen years until he’d started sleeping in trees or at friends’ houses. That his father hadn’t gone away until he’d watched walkers tear him apart, unable to move a muscle to help the man who had done nothing but terrify him his entire life.

“Your papa helped,” Daryl said, and it was true in its own way. His new family had covered over his old wounds like a band-aid, soothing them until they eventually healed, leaving only faint scars that rarely hurt anymore. “And your aunts and uncles.”

“They scareded away the Willies?”

“Mhm,” Daryl said. “Family has a way of makin things less scary.”

“Can I sleep with you and papa tonight?” she asked, already giving both men puppy dog eyes, her bottom lip poking out. And for the thousandth time since the day she’d come into the world, Daryl was reminded that he’d never deny her anything. If she was the most spoiled rotten child in the entire apocalypse, he didn’t give two shits.

“Course you can, lil asskicker,” he said, already scooping her up in his arms to carry her off to their room. Rick followed behind, tickling the bottoms of her feet.

The faint sound of her giggling was infinitely better than her screams.

 


End file.
